A late morning start after filing up with water at the top of Farmers Bridge locks. Very quiet until it was time to leave and suddenly boats wanted to descend the locks. We backed out gracefully and headed west on the BCN main Line and took a left onto the Wolverhampton Level at Smethick. Stopped for lunch and visited the Smethick Pump House which had a open day.
Continuing through Birmingham, it's not the bleak, desolate, past industrial wasteland I recall but a pleasant green corridor through a regenerated urban landscape. Apart from the water, black, oily and strewn with rubbish, no change there.
The M5 follows closely part of the canal and in placed the canal runs under the motorway for some hundreds of metres.
Moored at Topton Junction near the Black Country Museum. We have been here before but I have no recollection of the approach canals. It was before Ada, it was even before mobile phones! I know this because I remember wandering through the closed museum looking for a public phone box (I wonder what alarms would be set of doing that today). I did not find a phone, maybe because there were none during Victorian/Edwardian times.
Batteries fully charged after about 5 hours engine time. One problem with the advanced regulator a couple of days back was all the LEDs flashing. This means a 'high alternator output voltage' but this did not show on the Smartmeter. However, I had originally collected the positive of the alternator to the batteries with 2 cables. As one of these was hanging directly off a battery terminal I removed it for the BSC examination and had not replaced it. The advanced regulator functioned correctly after replacing this cable. Job for the future replace the 2 cables with one thicker cable - check engine handbook for the correct size.
No comments:
Post a Comment